y were old,
respectable house-keepers, serf-women, whom the masters honored with
their presence.

December 21. Levitan suffers from dilation of the aorta. He carries
clay on his chest. He has superb studies for pictures, and a
passionate thirst for life.

December 31. P.I. Seryogin, the landscape painter, came.

1897.

From January 10 to February 3 busy with the census. I am enumerator
of the 16th district, and have to instruct the other (fifteen)
enumerators of our Bavykin Section. They all work superbly, except
the priest of the Starospassky parish and the Government official,
appointed to the Zemstvo, G., (who is in charge of the census
district); he is away nearly all the time in Serpukhovo, spends every
evening at the Club and keeps on wiring that he is not well. All the
rest of the Government officials of our district are also said to do
nothing.

With such critics as we have, authors like N.S. Lyeskov and S.V.
Maximov cannot be a success.

Between "there is a God" and "there is no God" lies a whole vast
tract, which the really wise man crosses with great effort. A Russian
knows one or other of these two extremes, and the middle tract between
them does not interest him; and therefore he usually knows nothing, or
very little.

The ease with which Jews change their religion is justified by many on
the ground of indifference. But this is not a justification. One has
to respect even one's indifference, and not change it for anything,
since indifference in a decent man is also a religion.

February 13. Dinner at Mme. Morosov's. Tchouprov, Sololevsky,
Blaramberg, Sablin and myself were present.

February 15. Pancakes at Soldatienkov's [a Moscow publisher]. Only
Golziev [editor of _Russian Thought_] and myself were present. Many
fine pictures, nearly all badly hung. After the pancakes we drove to
Levitan, from whom Soldatienkov bought a picture and two studies for
1,100 roubles. Met Polyenov [famous painter]. In the evening I was
at professor Ostroumov's; he says that Levitan "can't help dying." O.
himself is ill and obviously frightened.

February 16. Several of us met in the evening in the offices of
_Russian Thought_ to discuss the People's Theatre. Every one liked
Shekhtel's plan.

February 19. Dinner at the "Continental" to commemorate the
great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious and
incongruous. To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver
speeches about national consc